// ENERGY, CLIMATE AND ENVIRONMENTAL SECURITY: CLIMATE CHANGE
Improving G7 performance on climate change
The retreat of key powers from international climate cooperation potentially undermines the G7’s ability to manage the crisis. The Kananaskis Summit marks a crucial opportunity to demonstrate credible and united leadership on climate governance
8%. Thus, proportionately, G7 decisions have not kept pace with the deliberations. Recently, there has also been inconsistency. During Trump’s first presidency, the number of G7 climate commitments declined steadily before vanishing in 2019 and 2020. Although the UK in 2021 and Germany in 2022 brought them back, with the summits they hosted making 13% and 15% respectively, a decline returned in 2023 with 9% and in 2024 with 3%. DELIVERY Members’ compliance with the 104 climate commitments assessed by the G7 Research Group averages 77% – on par with the 77% average with the 736 assessed commitments on all subjects. In its first three decades, climate compliance averaged 72%. In the next two decades it rose to 77%. However, from 2015 when the Paris Agreement was signed until 2023, compliance averaged 83%. More recently, compliance has been consistently high. For commitments made in 2021 it averaged 90%, for 2022 88% and for 2023 91%. However, by December 2024 compliance with the 2024 Apulia Summit commitment to mobilise adaptation financing averaged a very low 56%. RECOMMENDATIONS The G6 can expect conflict with the current US administration, whose values are antithetical to the post–World War Two global order, including on multilateral cooperation for climate action. In this context, the G6 must remain united, and promote evidence-based outcomes at the Kananaskis Summit. This should start with declaring strong, unwavering support for the multilateral United Nations climate system, with the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change at its core. G7 climate commitments that reference the UNFCCC average 77%, the highest compliance of any other type of climate commitment. Sustained internal institutional support is also key. Data show a positive correlation between pre-summit environmental ministerial meetings and compliance outcomes. G7 presidencies that held such ministerial meetings produced 10% higher compliance with climate commitments made at that year’s summit. Maintaining the required sense of urgency in response to the climate crisis is essential. Climate commitments that specify a short timeline also average higher compliance than those that delay action for the next generation to deal with. A one-year or multiyear timeline in a commitment generates 76% compliance.
I n June 2025, G7 leaders meet in Kananaskis against a backdrop of unprecedented circumstances with political authoritarianism and climate change colliding. On 20 January, US president Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement and revoked its climate financing commitments to the international community. The Trump-G6 dynamic will take centre stage at Kananaskis: the G7 is no longer a like-minded group. How well the G6 can unite against Trump’s deviations will have a deep impact on the Kananaskis Summit’s priorities of disaster response and prevention, extreme weather events and wildfires around the world. Climate change has been on the G7’s agenda for almost five decades, taking a greater share of its declarations over time, with commitments that have rising compliance, if not impact. DELIBERATIONS Since 1975, the G7 has dedicated an average of 5% of its declarations to climate change at each summit. In its first three decades, it averaged only 2% on climate change per summit. In the following two decades, from 2005 to 2024, this average jumped to 10%, signalling climate change as an increasingly global phenomenon. Over the past five years, the problem has grown and attention has increased. With the exception of Trump removing climate change from the agenda in 2020 in the brief virtual G7 summit he hosted during the Covid-19 pandemic, it continued to be discussed. A year later, under different leadership the G7 dedicated 19% of its deliberations to climate change. This continued, with 25% in 2022, 35% in 2023 and 13% in 2024. DECISIONS The G7 has made 496 climate commitments, taking 6% of the total on all subjects. In the first three decades, it averaged 5% per summit. In the following two decades, the average rose slightly to
Brittaney Warren, director of
compliance and climate change research, G7 Research Group
77% Average compliance with G7 commitments that reference the UNFCCC, the highest of any other type of climate commitment
104 // G7 CANADA: THE KANANASKIS SUMMIT 2025
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